Dear Friends,
Pentecost marks the passing of the great ‘week of weeks’ after Easter. Seven weeks ago we discovered that the tomb was empty. Today we hear the good news of how the Resurrection could not be contained by any group of individuals, ethnicity or language. Today we lose any sense that we can control what good news looks or sounds like. Today we are reinvigorated in faith and re-empowered in action.
The colour of the day is red, evoking energy, life and passion. The symbols of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost are fire and breath/wind:
Burn, burn Everlasting One in love,
as when you burned in love’s first dawn
before all things
when the Son was breathed forth
and in Creation we were born in that same love
to be his limbs. (Hildegard ofBingen)
Today, we are re-commissioned for service and for ministry. I hope this morning you will come forward to receive the anointing with holy oil that symbolises, makes sacred and seals our shared task of ministry. All the baptised are rightly called ‘ministers’, and in the Spirit’s power we are all imbued with gifts of grace and goodness.
This is also the last day of NZ Music Month, and, as someone who has a real passion about the spirituality of contemporary song, I feel the need for a local lyric. Here, from a ‘secular’ musician—then in the process of rediscovering his faith—Dave Dobbyn’s Naked Flame, with its delight, possibility and vulnerability before the symbol of Pentecost:
And I watched the bloom—only one of its kind—
grows to fill the room, and the room goes on for ever:
Sudden staring at a naked … flame.
I’m new to dancing:
I catch my breath, I catch my breath
in the middle of a dance with you.
All this fire in the room started with a candle,
candle blew over, catches fire to me and you.
Naked.
May God bless you all.
Fr Tim Hurd
